TONIGHT the Central Coast Mariners will face up against K-League Classic outfit Suwon Bluewings and despite the Korean’s being tough opponents, they will not be tweaking their game plan.
TONIGHT the Central Coast Mariners will face up against K-League Classic outfit Suwon Bluewings and despite the Korean-s being tough opponents, they will not be tweaking their game plan.
The match up at Central Coast Stadium marks the start to the Mariners- 2013 AFC Champions League campaign where they will begin their quest to conquer Asia-s best.
Australian born free-kick dynamo Eddy Bosnar is one of Suwon-s centre backs and at the Official Pre-Match Press Conference on Tuesday, Bosnar touched on the importance of what the Bluewings refer to as the ‘Suwon Style’.
Bosnar left the shores of Australia at a young age to play in many leagues around Europe. More recently, Bosnar has found success in Asia.
When asked about his knowledge of Australian football and whether it will assist his side-s performance against the Mariners, Bosnar was confident that they would stay true to their own team ethos.
“To be honest we have our own style, we call it the ‘Suwon Style- and we don-t really change anything,” he said. We might have to be careful on set pieces and maybe some of the long balls but otherwise we play our own style.”
The match at Bluetongue is the first competitive fixture for Suwon in 2013 and will also mark the debut for their new Head Coach Seo Jung-won. Yoon Sung-hyo stepped down as Bluewings boss after the 2012 campaign, making way for club legend Seo to take the Suwon hot seat.
“Our boss this year did a lot of the training last year, so we were getting used to what we were coming into this year. We worked quite hard physically in the training camp but also tactically we are really compact and he worked really hard on that and I think that-s our strong point,” he said.
Candidly saying that he isn-t sure whether or not he will feature in tonight-s Suwon squad, Bosnar is not the only danger man for the Bluewings. After extensive homework and help from Graham Arnold-s invaluable scouting network the Mariners know some of the players they will need to look out for.
“We know that they are an extremely good football team with extremely good players, obviously (Jong) Tae-se the North Korean striker, Stevica Ristic, Kim Do-heon who has played a lot for the national team and also their keeper Jung Sung-ryong who is also a national team player,” Arnold said.
Despite big players that feature regularly in national team set-ups and the ‘Suwon Style- that Bosnar rates as “their biggest strength,” Arnold hopes to come up against a side that are not as prepared, either physically or tactically, as his Mariners.
“We-re hoping that they are a little bit rusty,” he said. We know they haven-t played a competition match this season and we-re match fit and 22 rounds into the competition so hopefully we can catch them a little bit short.”
Goalkeeper Jung was a part of Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma-s AFC Champions League triumph in 2010, and Macedonian striker Ristic was a key player in Pohang Steelers- triumph a year earlier.
Tonight is Bosnar-s first ever match against a Hyundai A-League club.
As a club Suwon have only played one other Hyundai A-League team which was Sydney FC in 2011. At the Sydney Football Stadium, they fought out a goalless draw, before returning to win the home leg 3-1 in Korea Republic.
2013 AFC Champions League Matchday 1 – Central Coast Mariners (AUS) vs. Suwon Bluewings (KOR)
Wednesday 27 February, 2013
Central Coast Stadium, Gosford
Kick-off: 7:00pm
Tickets: Please CLICK HERE to purchase tickets to the match!
Twitter: Join the match conversation on Twitter. The official hash-tag is #CCMvSB
